Page 15 of Lawless (Dauntless Island #2)

NATTY

Y ard work was harder than I thought it’d be—at least doing it for a week straight was.

But I finally straightened up one afternoon, and then looked around and realised I was pretty much finished.

The yard looked as neat as it had when Short Clarry had lived here.

The cat was even sunning herself on the kitchen step.

I’d dragged all the branches out to the front, and asked Robbie Finch if he could bring his cart around and help me move them for twenty bucks.

Once that was done, I wouldn’t have to be here everyday.

It’d be one day a week tops to keep the place neat.

My aching muscles would thank me, but that didn’t explain the sudden unhappy swoop in my gut.

I’d miss Dominic.

Most of the time he was working inside when I was outside—or he was out doing his foot patrols of the village—but he checked in all the time.

He asked if I wanted a drink, or a snack, or just wandered out with a plate of toasted sandwiches, which seemed to be the only thing he could cook.

When I told him that I didn’t need to work every day now, he looked as disappointed as I felt, but then he smiled and said I could always drop over for a cuppa.

For a few days after finishing up Dominic’s yard I didn’t have any work, but one morning before dawn Katrina Finch knocked on the door and said Robbie was sick, and would I come and work on the farm today?

Button John was doing the run to the mainland with Young Harry Barnes, so it was just me.

It was hard work too, even though they had a milking machine.

Getting a silicon cup on a cow that could sense your inexperience was a challenge—I got knocked onto my arse more than once.

And the goats were even worse. Katrina was in a mood too—not with me, given the way she kept glaring at the house and muttering under her breath about Robbie, but it didn’t make for a fun day.

I was glad when I finally got the milking done—hours late, but still done—and she went and made the deliveries while I mucked out the shed and then collected the eggs from the chickens’ nesting boxes and packed them carefully into cartons.

I was filthy when I got home, covered from head to toe in dirt and shit. It was lunchtime, and my stomach was growling. I was hungry enough that I wanted omelettes for lunch, stuffed full of capsicum and mushrooms and cheese. Katrina had given me some eggs as well as cash for helping her out today.

I hoped Mum had remembered to eat the sandwiches I’d left out for her for breakfast and wasn’t starving like I was.

I opened the kitchen door. “Mum?”

It took her a moment, but she appeared in the doorway, a faint smile on her face.

“I’m going to make lunch in a minute,” I said. “Did you eat breakfast?”

“Yes,” she said softly, but I didn’t know whether to believe it or not.

“Okay.” I gestured at myself. “I just have to get cleaned up, then I’ll come in and start lunch, okay?”

She smiled again, and then wandered away without saying anything.

I rubbed my chest, soothing the ache that always settled there when it came to Mum. Mum was like... living with her was like watching the tide pull someone away from you, and you knew you could never reach them. You could only watch them getting smaller in the distance.

I moved from the doorway into the lean-to and twisted on the tap in the laundry tub. Nipper Will would kill me if I tracked shit through the house. I pulled my T-shirt off and threw it in the tub. Then—I don’t know why—I looked over my shoulder and my heart froze in my chest.

There was a flash of movement from one of the upstairs windows at Dominic’s house.

Just a flicker of a curtain, and then nothing, and I stared at the window and wondered if he was looking.

Not just looking, but watching , because it suddenly felt as though there was a million miles of distance between those two words.

I reached for the button on my jeans. My heart raced, making up for those frozen beats from a second ago, tumbling over itself above the sudden swoop in my belly.

I didn’t know if he was watching. I didn’t know if it had been him at the window at all— maybe it was the cat.

But maybe he was there, still looking down at me, holding his breath as he waited to see what I was going to do next.

I popped the button and unzipped my fly. I shoved my jeans down to my thighs. I kept staring up at the window—if he was there, I wanted him to know I knew. Wanted him to know this was for him. This sexy strip tease.

Except it wasn’t a sexy strip tease, really, because I hadn’t taken my boots off yet, so I had to do that.

And then, if there was a sexy way to get out of jeans, I didn’t know what it was.

And running my hands over my abdomen might have looked okay from a distance, but I could see the smear of chicken shit it left behind, and it was gross.

I reached into the tub for the block of red carbolic soap that lived there, and dug it out of the water.

I rubbed it across my chest and abdomen, leaving a slick trail of suds behind.

The suds slid down my skin, and caught in the elastic band of my underwear.

I gazed at Dominic’s window, my heart thumping fast, as I hooked my fingers around the elastic.

Was I really going to do this?

I tugged my underwear down and stepped out of it.

Holy shit. I really did it.

It should have felt a lot more awkward than it did, standing there in the shade of the lean-to, with my dick out.

It was still pretty fucking awkward, but the fact that Dominic might have been watching?

That made it weirdly hot as well. I liked the idea that he might be watching.

But also, it didn’t matter? If he thought I was just some weirdo getting naked in my backyard, then he wouldn’t be watching, right?

If he was, then he was into it too. Probably ?

Fuck if I could tell exactly what my thought process was as I curled my soapy fingers around my dick and tugged it into life. Not like it needed a pull start like Big Johnny’s chainsaw. Hell no. It was ready and raring to go.

I tried to keep staring at Dominic’s window while I stroked myself off, to see if the curtain twitched again, but I couldn’t; my eyes kept fluttering closed.

It felt so good. The breeze was cool on my wet, naked skin, and the ground was warm under my bare feet.

Water trickled over me, tickling and teasing, and I wondered what it would feel like to be doing this with another person.

Someone who’d tease me too, but follow up their feather-light touches with kisses, and the scrape of teeth.

Someone with olive skin and freckles on his cheeks, and eyebrows that somehow laughed just as much as his mouth did.

Could eyebrows laugh?

Dominic’s could.

I wondered what it would feel like if he kissed me.

I wondered if his fingers had calluses that would drag against my skin.

What was his dick like? How would it feel if he put me on my hands and knees and pressed it inside me?

Or maybe we’d do it in his bed, face to face, with my legs hooked over his arms so that we could kiss?—

And just like that, I was coming, biting down on my forearm so that I didn’t cry out, spurting all over the cracked concrete under the lean to.

Holy shit.

Lucky I hadn’t been trying to show off my staying power, because that lasted all of about thirty seconds.

I blinked down at the mess I’d made, then scooped a few handfuls of water out of the tub and threw it over it.

I hoped Dominic wasn’t watching that part.

Now that it was over, I felt breathless and stupid and embarrassed, so I dumped my clothes in the tub and hurried inside, slamming the kitchen door shut behind me.

* * *

I t was dark before Nipper Will got home. I was watching TV in the living room. I’d already made dinner for Mum, and she’d eaten and gone to bed. The slam of the kitchen door told me Will was in a mood, and the bellowed “Natty!” really drove it home.

I peeled myself off the couch, plastered a scowl on my face, and stomped to the kitchen. “What?” And then I saw the blood pissing out of the fleshy part of his hand. “ Shit . What happened?”

“Can you get the first aid kit?” he asked through gritted teeth.

I scrambled to drag it out from under the sink. “What happened?”

“Was cutting a line,” he said. “I slipped.”

I grabbed a tea towel and thrust it at him. He wrapped it around his hand, and it was soaked through in moments.

“Shit. Is it bad? It looks bad.”

“It’s fine .” Will sat down heavily at the kitchen table. “It’s fine.”

It really wasn’t fine. He looked way too pale.

“Just hold the tea towel there,” I said. “Okay, now let me look at—holy shit, there’s so much blood.”

“Just help me bandage it.”

“I think maybe Red Joe needs to look at it.” Red Joe wasn’t a doctor or anything, but he was in charge of the medical chest from the Royal Flying Doctor Service, so he was who we went to when an aspirin and a Band-Aid wouldn’t cut it.

“Natty.” Will gave me a narrow look, but there was something underneath it, something vulnerable, that made my stomach twist up. “I need you to help me stop the bleeding. Now .”

“Just...” I swallowed. “Just hold the tea towel there, okay? I’ll be back!”

“Fuck’s sake,” Will said through a growl. “Natty!”

But I was already out the kitchen door and halfway across the back yard. I scrambled over the sagging fence between our yard and Dominic’s. I didn’t need the moonlight to find my way through his yard; I knew it better than my own after all the hours I’d put in. I banged on Dominic’s back door.

He wasn’t in uniform when he answered it. And he didn’t say anything about the whole wanking thing either. He just took one look at my face and said, “What’s wrong?”